Category Archives: Political Philosophy

‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph

Barack Obama, Government, History, Human Accomplishment, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Republicans, Socialism

“‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph” is the current column, now on RT. Here is an excerpt:

“… Not once but four times did Obama repeat the gist of his clinching line, ‘You didn’t build that.’ With each iteration, his voice dripped contempt for individual achievement.

‘…you didn’t get there on your own.
You didn’t get there on your own.
If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.
Somebody else made that happen.’

‘You didn’t build That’ will be Barack Obama’s political epitaph.

Obama’s collectivism, and vertiginous ignorance, called for a one-two punch. A knockout. Patrick J. Buchanan was the only rightist—I hesitate to libel Mr. Buchanan as a Republican—who delivered the blow.

‘Barack Obama, with due respect, does not understand America — at least that part of America that produces and creates,’ roared Buchanan on Fox News. ‘Obama spent his whole life in tax-exempt, tax-subsidized and tax-supported institutions. Does he not understand what creates the wealth in America?’

‘For the first 175 years of our existence as a people, there was no federal government. Who does he think created that country of 3 million who defeated the greatest empire in the world, other than the individuals who built the farms and little factories; who clothed and fed and housed themselves and created one of the greatest societies on earth, again, before the federal government was created?’

Indeed, America is the culmination of the individual principle of voluntary cooperation…

… Obama’s remarks at Roanoke, Virginia, on July 13, 2012, were more than a faux pas.

With these remarks, Obama has come out of the closet as a most odious collectivist, who believes religiously that government predation is a condition for production. Or, put simply, that the parasite created the host.

With his near-religious repetition of the ‘you didn’t build that’ phrase, the president of the United States demonstrated his faith in the statist principle of compulsory cooperation. …”

The complete column, “‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph,” can be read on RT.

Also available from WND is my book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.” The paperback edition features bonus material, including an Afterword by Burkean philosopher Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. Order it from WND.

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CNN Bimbo Holds Out Hope For Socialism

EU, Europe, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Socialism

This week, CNN’s ERIN BURNETT, HOST of OUTFRONT, and “a valued member of the OUTFRONT Strike Team,” whatever gimmick that stands for, entertained the possibility that President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party might just “save Europe’s economy and ours.”

Burnett’s babbling was boosted by “striker” Bill Gross, CO-CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER of PIMCO, who positively spun the political platform of Francois Hollande by describing France’s manifestly socialist agenda as “pro-growth,” and as “a different way forward.”

I listened to the Gross man live on TV. CNN’s transcriber failed to transcribe Gross’s salutary reference to France’s founding principles of “liberté, égalité, fraternité, writing in their place: “(INAUDIBLE)”

But here is Mr. Gross(out)’s verbatim nod to the blood-drenched, illiberal French Revolution and its legacy:

I think what [Hollande] is trying to do is favor labor as opposed to capital. Remember the (INAUDIBLE) [Gross actually said “liberté, égalité, fraternité”] and you know he’s moving in that direction. To the extent that he moves only gradually, I think that’s a positive. What France needs, what Euro land needs is growth. And to the extent that they can prevent a continuing recession, then the growth is going to be positive.

An “anti-austerity vote in France” Erin’s strike-man has conflated with a “pro-growth” agenda.

The Law is a pamphlet published in June, 1850, by Frédéric Bastiat, a great classical liberal “economist, statesman, and author.” Bastiat castigated his countrymen for becoming “the most governed, the most regulated, the most imposed upon, the most harnessed, and the most exploited people in Europe.”

In 1860, Bastiat saw France as a society that “receives its momentum from power”; a passive people who “consider themselves incapable of bettering their prosperity and happiness by their own intelligence and their own energy.”

“So long as they expect everything from the law,” he warned, “their relationship to the state [would be] the same as that of the sheep to the shepherd.”

Moreover, Bastiat, who had a mind like no other, did not share Mr. Gross’s fondness for French “fraternity.” “Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty,” he proclaimed.

“In fact, it is impossible for me,” wrote the great man, “to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed, and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot.”

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Obama’s Parasite Economy

Economy, Government, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Natural Law, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Private Property, The State

The Free Dictionary teaches that a host is “an animal or plant on which or in which another organism lives.” This is precisely the nature of the relationship between the private, productive sector, and the public, unproductive sector. The last lives at the pleasure of the first; or lives off the first.

In the brouhaha over Barack Obama’s “The Private Sector is Doing Fine” comment, nobody is asking, Who’s property is it anyway? And why would a system (“The Economy”) do better when the number of parasites (people whose spending is financed as a result of coercive transfers of wealth from the private sector) it carries continues to grow (or to stagnate)?

The public sector consumes wealth—it doesn’t produce it.

Reason Magazine, representing as it does a variant of what I call “Libertarianism Lite,” focuses elsewhere.

Based on charts he generated at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ website, Reason’s Nick Gillespie notes that, “As it stands, the number of private-sector employees is about equal to what it was in 2005. And in 2000, which is really appalling. … The current number of government workers is about what it was in 2006.”

In the rest of the post, Gillespie does his utmost to clarify what BHO really meant when he said that,

The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. Oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, Governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

UPDATED: The Kochtopus Convenes, Again

China, Free Markets, libertarianism, Liberty, Neoconservatism, Objectivism, Political Philosophy, South-Africa

Last year, RT interviewed me about “Libertarianism Lite,” in anticipation of what is supposed to be libertarian officialdom’s Event of the Year, Freedom Fest.

The Kochtopus is set to convene again. With the exceptions of Tom Woods and Peter Schiff, it’s the same old guard, bedecked with a bimbo version of Penn Jillette for hip value.

The Andrew Napolitano-Koch Connection has been established. (See LewRockwekll.com.) I was never a huge fan of Freedom Watch, which, in my opinion, had that distinct CATO/Beltway, left-libertarian bent.

By way of an example, take the “War Street Journal’s” Stephen Moore, a natural star of any Kochtopus Convention. Moore was forever appearing in furtherance of freedom on Judge Napolitano’s Freedom Watch.

No wonder Moore, like Neal Boortz, is Hannity’s in-house freedom fighter too. One of Moore’s books was “Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer.”

“Bush’s bailout society” was an instantiation of the principles upon which “Bush’s ownership society” was founded: credit for those who are not creditworthy. But not even a full-throated support of the Bush affirmative action in housing loans amounts to an indictment among America’s incestuous (oft-libertarian) teletwits.

If you’re after some dry-as-dust, dispassionate, desiccated disquisitions on conventional aspects of the free market about which we all agree—and which Mises and Rothbard already covered better—Freedom Fest is the “happening” place for you.

My guess is that a demonstration for George Zimmerman around the corner would draw a real crowd.

UPDATE: In Reply to a thread on Facebook, written by writers who can’t tell their Left from their Right. Both of the FF speakers lauded on the thread are open-border, left libertarians, and one belongs to an outfit that honored the decidedly anti-capitalism Desmund Tutu, with whom I once took afternoon tea, as he was a friend of my father’s, before “forgetting” father’s contribution to “The Struggle.” It’s in my book; a book about the reality in the New South Africa, as opposed to the parallel reality peddled by left libertarian think tanks.

The other chap is known for his anti-Israel irrationalism, exposed in “Libertarians Who Loathe Israel” & “FOAMING AT THE MOUTH OVER ISRAEL.” Being so “intellectually honest” (NOT), this one character has practically boycotted all my work from the shrinking forums he controls, even though it jibes with his, for the most (although mine is actually fun to read). Intellectual honesty, Yeah, right.